Stamped with Grace

Upon entering the saving faith, we are marked with the ultimate stamp of approval, not won by merit but by grace through faith alone. This “seal … who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” is none other than the Holy Spirit. We’ve been stamped with grace.
Just as God’s acts of redemption did not start or [...]

In Christ Alone

HT: girl talk

Challies Dot Com

A few links to posts from Challies.com :
1) Is Forgiveness Conditional or Unconditional?
2) Take This Cup (Redux)
3) Hymns & Worship
4) Drawing Out the Infection

The Blazing Center

I have found The Blazing Center blog to be quite insightful. Here are links to some of the posts there:
1 ) How To Master A Book
2 ) Interrogating Your Soul
3 ) An Adventure in Disguise
4 ) The Story of God’s Goodness
5 ) Memories of Wickedness
6 ) Arguing With God
7 ) His Last Friday Was His [...]

Pursue a Paul

I once heard the following three lines:
Pursue a Paul
Be a Barnabas
Train a Timothy
 The “Paul” in one’s life is like a spiritual mentor, while being the “Barnabas” embraces the role of encourager, and the trainer role would involve discipling.
Maybe we could extend the first line to include looking to Paul as an example, as a mentor. [...]

An Engineer’s Guide to Cats

HT: Tim Challies

Flavors of Grace

Colossians 4:5-6 says: “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
From the post Purposeful Words on the girl talk blog:
So if a friend is condemned or legalistic, I [...]

Sacrifice

In the following blurb (found in a post on the Between Two Worlds blog), Todd Bolen talks about animal sacrifices, and, according to the above-mentioned blog, links to a “Passover Sacrifice video”:
[...]We read about sacrifice in the Bible but we don’t really understand what that means. We read passages that talk about the “life being [...]

3 Things

Thing #1: The Least of These
On Monday I heard a talk on Matthew 25. Note verse 40, NIV, boldness added:
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Note the bold part. Interesting, eh?
Thing #2: Preaching the Gospel to [...]

Do Hard Things

Skim the whole thing but let the following blurbs from Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris whet your appetite…
This world would have you think that your best life would be a life in which you were able to completely avoid responsibility and effort. But a life like that could be compared to the [...]